Bird box

Make a bumper around Cheryl’s Wagoneer. Paint the windows black. Don’t worry about what you run into. Just go. Drive five, six miles an hour. You have babies in the house now, Malorie. You have to know if something is out there. If something is near. The microphones will let you know that.

Leaving the bathroom, she went to the kitchen. There she studied the map Felix, Jules, and Tom once used to plan a route to Tom’s house on foot. Their notes were still on it. Felix’s calculations. Using the scale, she made her own.

She wanted Tom’s advanced alarm system. She needed it. Yet, despite her newfound determination, she still didn’t know where to go.

Late one evening, while the babies slept, she sat at the kitchen table and tried to remember her very first drive to the house. It had been less than a year ago. Back then, her mind was on the address from the ad. But what did she pass along the way?

She tried to remember.

A Laundromat.

That’s good. What else?

Storefronts were empty. It looked like a ghost town and you were worried the people who placed the ad might no longer be there. You thought they’d either gone mad or packed up the car and driven faraway.

Yes, all right. What else?

A bakery.

Good. What else?

What else?

Yes.

A bar.

Good. What did the marquee boast?

I don’t know. That’s a ridiculous question!

You don’t remember the sadness you felt at the name of . . . the name of . . .

Of what?

The name of the band?

The band?

You read the name of a band slated to perform on a date already two weeks past. What was it?

I’ll never remember the name of the band.

Right, but the feeling?

I don’t remember.

Yes, you do. The feeling.

I was sad. I was scared.

What’d they do there?

What?

At the bar. What’d they do there?

I don’t know. They drank. They ate.

Yes. What else?

They danced?

They danced.

Yes.

And?

And what?

How did they dance?

I don’t know.

What did they dance to?

They danced to music. They danced to the band.

Malorie brought a hand to her forehead and smiled.

Right. They danced to the band.

And the band needed microphones. The band needed amplifiers.

Tom’s ideas lingered in the house like ghosts.

Just like we did it, Tom might say. Just like the time Jules and I took a walk around the block. You weren’t able to partake in a lot of those activities, Malorie, but you can now. Jules and I rounded up dogs and later used them to walk to my house. Think about that, Malorie. It all kind of happened in a row, each step allowed the next step to happen. All because we weren’t stagnant. We took risks. Now you’ve got to do the same. Paint the windshield black.

Don had laughed when Tom suggested driving blind.

But it’s exactly what she did.

Victor, he would help her. Jules once refused to let him be used like that. But Malorie had two newborns in a room down the hall. The rules were different now. Her body still ached from the delivery. The muscles in her back were always tight. If she moved too quickly, it felt like her groin might snap. She got exhausted easily. She never had the rest a new mother deserves.

Victor, she thought then, hewill protect you.